Sklar on the Causal Theory of Time
Sklar's attitude to the causal theory of time is, unlike his attitude to many other issues in his book (you know, he consistently tried to avoid committing himself to a specific position!), rather skeptical. He distinguishes the scientific version and the philosophical version of the causal theory, and argues that difficulties with the former would lead the proponents to the latter, as a thesis of philosophical reductionism (333). Then, referring to the criticism against Reichenbach and Gruenbaum that we cannot independently establish causal priorities without already knowing the temporal priorities (340), he points out that appealing to the special relativity will not help. For, according to Sklar, what's going on in the special relativity is that, assuming local spatiotemporal notions, we go to distant spatiotemporal relations. This does not support the claim that all of the spatiotemporal notions should be defined in terms of non-spatiotemporal notions, causal notions in particular (341).
Sklar even suggests that the reverse direction may be more promising. Drawing on Hume's analysis of causation, we may try to define causation in terms of spatiotemporal notions and other notions. However, Sklar does not mean that he wants to adopt this position:
All that I wished to argue here is that the causal theory of time is implausible, and that if any reduction thesis has any plausibility at all, it is that which alleged the definability of causal notions by temporal notions and not that which maintains the definability of the temporal by the causal. (343)
Last modified March 31, 2002. (c) Soshichi Uchii